Bluffton Invite

Life has been…normal lately, that’s why I haven’t posted anything in a while. School is so demanding that I’ve hardly been able to do anything social and exciting that’s worth reporting on…till now.

This weekend was the Bluffton, Indiana invite, and we decided this year to take a large group up. We ended up getting 16 to go: 13 girls and 3 boys. That required two vans, one of which was my own, and a car. The boys, Jessica Sauder, Anni, and Brenna went in my van and, on the way up, the six hour drive seemed to go by really quickly. Before I knew it we were walking into the Apostolic school down there, late, as usual, and plunging into the beginning of a fun and somewhat tiring weekend. First things first we had to meet up with old friends and become acquainted with some new ones. This is my favorite part about invites. When you meet new people you can be whoever you want to be to them.

Next, in a somewhat disorganized way we found vans to pile into and drove to the Bluffton distribution center for a work project. We were to fill boxes with food to send out, and my job was the crunchy peanut butter. That went all fine and well until I ran out of peanut butter and an attention span for the simple project. I moved on to a more exciting job: flattening boxes in the middle of the room. By the end I got to know some great girls and together we had a lot of fun being goofy.

Back at the school we practiced the songs we would be singing for the church on Sunday. The song leader called them the Hallelujah medley.

We had dinner, which was nice, except I mistakenly sat near a group of guys and once a conversation was started the subject quickly became about cars, sports, and deer. I only know enough about one of those subjects to actually have a part in the conversation and what I knew wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

No big deal, though, the next activity was a lovely singing in which we learned a new song that I fell in love with, I think it was called the Old Fashioned Religion or something. Following that we had  a minister come up and give a message. He had a nifty PowerPoint pulled up and announced the topic to be about the make up of a Christian. He went on to speak on the heart, brain, hands, and feet of a Christian. It was a blessing of a message.

For the rest of the evening we would have snacks, play volleyball, and basketball, have a praise singing, and fellowshipping (notice the “i” in that last word as opposed to an “o” MOM! ) During this time one girl came up to me and asked if I remembered her. Having met so many new people that day I apologized, for I did remember her face, but her name escaped my memory. Well, Nicole jogged my memory by telling me that we had met a few years at Girls Camp. That year I had been struggling a lot and I must have poured out my troubles to her because she let me know that she has been praying for me ever since. For years I’ve had a sister in Christ interceding for me in prayer and I didn’t even know it! That was the biggest blessing of the entire weekend, to hear her say that.

As far as accommodations went, we were assigned to go places. I was lucky to have met the girl whose house I would be staying at. The Eissenman girls were all very sweet and I felt like best friends with them already. There was not one awkward moment among us and we fell into easy conversation as soon as we reached their house. We chatted about light topics like vacations and books and about deep topics like the end of the world until 1:00 at which time we all were “fading fast”.

That morning we woke to the smell of breakfast cooking. After a quick shower we came downstairs to meet the other 6 family members: the parents were both busy preparing breakfast for us while feeding the baby, Evan. Until breakfast we had only had glimpses of the twin boys: Jason and Jeremy, and their older brother: Andrew. Danielle, Alyssa, and Erika, the three eldest daughters had spent the day before and night with us.

Breakfast tasted as delicious as it smelled and perhaps we lingered a little too long at the table, for we ended up coming into the Bluffton Country church at the last song. The sermon was lovely and the singing afterwards: great. We ate lunch there then planned to follow some of the other young kids to the Bluffton North church. We piled in the van and rolled down the drivers window to ask another car if we could follow them. Well, the window had been having problems before, but we were always able to grab it and pull it up into place. I forgot to tell David not to let it go all the way down, which was exactly what he did unknowingly. We were in a hurry so we just left it on the freezing twenty minute drive to the other church, but once there the issue had to be addressed because, not only was it cold, but it was raining. David, Caleb, and Brett stayed outside and worked on trying to get it up while we girls went into the church to try to find some help. I don’t want to say anything against the Bluffton church, but we were not treated as hospitably as I would have hoped for and the boys ended up just driving it around town to try to find a car shop or something. They went to Wal-Mart and bought some pliers to try to grab the window with. They wrapped duct tape around the pliers hoping it would help grip the window. When that didn’t work they removed the tape…well, end of story, the window shattered inside the door. Good thing they were smart enough to buy some plastic to cover the gaping hole of a window space for the six hour drive home.

I shouldn’t complain because I adamantly refused to make anyone else drive, but I’m going to anyway: The plastic was not only loud as ever when we got up to speed, but it also came loose very quickly and did very little to keep out the cold. Brett’s pillow helped to muffle the noise, but there was no way to keep it against the window without it falling, so I held it up. My left arm became so tired at times, but I wrestled with whether I would rather feel the burn or hear the noise. Now that I think of it, its pretty remarkable that we made it out alive, I spent more focus on that pillow than the road.

At one point I went to pass an elderly Sunday driver. As I came up to him in the left lane I see his break lights go on and he slows suddenly. Looking up I realize a deer is running across the median and a quick calculation told me it would be crossing the road just as I went by. Things were not looking good for us or the deer as I slammed on the breaks and screamed “DEER, DEER, DEER”. Last minute she turned to run along sided us then crossed. I’m sure we must have clipped her tail we came that close. After wards Brett exclaimed, “It would be just our luck to hit a deer”. So true.

All in all, it was a nice weekend, but not worth the drive. I don’t think I will do it again, but that doesn’t mean I don’t regret going this year.

Sorry I forgot to bring my camera: no pictures.